Some years ago I found in Indiana a very nice, actually great, bison powder horn, neatly flattened, and heavily decorated with white (bone) and red (catlinite?) dots all arranged in patterns, with a few other small figures including diamonds. It had four initials, slightly separated in the middle, with a heart-figure surrounding them in red dots. It was obviously a sweat-heart image, to remember a wife or girlfriend when far away.
I showed the horn to Louis Parker at an Ilinois show and he feigned little interest in it, almost poo-poo'd it. But a month or two after the show he called and asked it the horn was still available and how much. Louis was difficult to negotiate with, but he had a rare Bardstown, KY pistol by Jacob Rizer that he had tormented me with for years, and I finally had something he really wanted... despite his efforts to play down the bison horn. We reached an agreement, he got the horn and some money, and I got a great pistol I couldn't otherwise pry loose from his steely hands.
Funny thing then happened... Louis changed his mind about the quality of the bison horn, and I heard through the grapevine that a few months later he had it out on a table at a St. Louis show and was really talking it up... go figure!
I mention this because this horn, while different, has the striations and strong curve of Bison horn, and despite the four initials running together, I'm inclined to think it's probably a western American horn and the initials indicate two people, perhaps man and wife/girlfriend. Not all buffalo horns were made in St. Louis, and not all are related to the great "black & white" horns that we think of as St. Louis horns, and that Louie Parker liked to build.
Shelby Gallien
